Click fraud is up – way up. As much as 1/3 of all clicks could be fradulent according to Click Forensics. The ongoing pay per click tracking provided by ClickForensics.com shows click fraud increased 15% in 2007.
The industry-wide average click fraud rate for the entire year went up 15 percent, ending the year with 16.6 percent of all clicks on Web ads being fraudulent. The click fraud rate for search engine ad networks alone, including Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network, grew even more. That was up 47 percent in the fourth quarter, ending the year with a 28.3 percent click fraud rate.
Hopefully Google, Yahoo and MSN Live are diligently working to reduce worthless clicks and start providing more transparent data to ppc ad buyers. I have a program that helps guard against illicit clicks, but the major search engines should be doing more self policing.
Below is a heatmap showing global locations of clickfraud.
The biggest sources of click fraud are India (4.3 percent), Germany (3.9 percent), and South Korea (3.7 percent). These 3 countries represent over half of all fradulent advertising clicks.
More about PPC click fraud from TechCrunch. See the paid search report on click fraud here.
